


Same Numbers, New Rules

by Untherius



Category: Emberverse - S. M. Stirling, Safe (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke and Mei have settled into their new life in Washington State...but it's nothing remotely close to what either of them envisioned when they'd left New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Numbers, New Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/gifts).



Grand Coulee Dam, Washington  
April 15, CY 5, 2016 AD

Luke Wright squinted in the morning sunlight, the steam of his breath refracting the light. He shivered slightly. Nights on the Columbia Plateau were chilly, and could remain so well into June. He glanced to his right where Mei sat her own horse, looking off at something in the distance.

She was probably counting something. Mei did that a lot. There were still numbers and they still meant life and death. It was just that whereas before, they'd been about dollars, combinations, codes, and bullets, now they were about men, horses, and crossbows. Luke had long ago stopped worrying about that. The game had changed irrevocably that evening four years before. In many ways, it was still the same: do a job, run and hide, do another job, run and hide, take down some asshole, run and hide.

“What do you think?” he said.

“Fifty-eight thousand, four hundred and ninety-three...and forty-seven cents,” said Mei in the same dead-pan tone she always used when reciting information.

“What?”

“You do remember what day it is, don't you?”

“It's April fifteenth. Why?”

“Surely you remember what that used to be.”

Luke chuckled. Of course he remembered. It just hadn't been a part of his life for what felt like an eternity. “So that number is what, exactly?”

“It's what we would have owed in Federal income tax.”

“Why do you keep track of that?”

Mei shrugged. “Just in case.”

“In case what? You know there hasn't been a US government in more than four years.”

“And you still don't think there ever will, do you?”

“Naw. Still haven't decided if it's a good thing or not, though.” He looked Mei in the eye. At fifteen, she was still half knees and elbows, though not for much longer. Despite their agreement when they'd left New York, their relationship had settled into something somewhat avuncular. He'd been fine with that, especially when the Change had happened.

She'd grown up fast, at least in spirit. He could see it in her eyes. The fight to get out of Seattle had been especially hard on her. Even the violence over those days in New York had not prepared her...or him, for that matter...for the sorts of things they'd seen during the first Change Year. It was one thing watching people kill each other over gang turf. It was quite another to see it happen out of survival and sheer desperation. Luke still had nightmares about some of it and he couldn't imagine how it must be for Mei, who remembered every detail, no matter how minute. How did she manage to keep from going crazy from all the memories of people eating each other and trying eat her?

Mei was silent for a few moments. “One thousand, four hundred ninety.”

Maybe that was why she kept track of everything...taxes, solunar tables, the migratory patterns of birds and fish, river levels, the fruiting seasons of edible plants and abandoned orchards, every last mile of every last trade route...to keep her mind occupied. Like in the song, she knew every handout in every town and every lock that ain't locked with no-one around. Those were all things one didn't have to remember all the time. Yet Mei did it anyway. “You know, Mei, it might help if you'd give me some context once in a while.”

Mei nodded toward the dam below them. “That's how many days the dam has gone without any sort of maintenance...at least not the sort it needs. Some day, it'll fail.”

“Now, _that's_ relevant.” Depending on when and how the dam failed, it could take out sections of road and every bridge clear to Bonneville Dam just upriver from Portland. That would further disrupt things all over the region. Without industrial machinery, good luck rebuilding any of that. On the other hand, the Romans had done a lot of civil engineering, and there'd been plenty of bridges built in Europe before things like ferro-concrete and steam shovels. But there weren't any rivers like the Columbia in Europe, either.

The seasonal flooding pattern in the Pacific Northwest made building old-style bridges problematic at best. Sure, there were some places, like the bridge over the Deschutes River at Sherar's Falls, that could support a permanent stone arch. And there were certainly many places that still had such spans built back in the eighteenth century. But otherwise, everyone would have to go back to using ferries eventually.

No, Luke wasn't at all sure he'd want the old life back, not after the way he'd seen it die. There just wasn't enough of it left anyway. Sure, Boise kept alive the dream of the U S of A, even to the point of claiming to be its remnant. Rumor had it there were several places...city-states really, and that was something else Luke hadn't really understood until after the Change...who'd made that claim. What would happen when they inevitably clashed over claims of capitalship? Anyway, things were a lot less complicated and he liked it that way.

“But until it does,” said Luke, “we have work to do.” He nudged his horse into motion, still scanning his surroundings. He didn't think anyone would try to sneak up on them that early in the morning, but one never knew. “Still beats the hell out of garbage collecting, though.”

Mei laughed. Luke liked it when she did that. It meant she was finding the joy in life. For a long time, he'd feared she'd been crushed, ever since New York. He could say that about himself, for that matter. He'd only recently found the time to properly grieve for his family. Though if he'd had to choose between that death or the far lengthier and messier one they'd have endured in a post-Change New York....

“People make me nervous,” said Mei. That was saying something, what with her being from what used to be the most populous nation on Earth.

“Too long on the range, huh?”

“Okay, strange people make me nervous.”

“How many strange people have we met since breaking out of Seattle?”

“All of them?”

Luke tilted his head back, but restrained his laughter. On a still morning, sound could carry and one always had to be wary of drawing the wrong kind of attention. Rumor had it there were still a few scattered bands of Eaters, even in the Yakima territory. Sure, rumors were unreliable, but they were still the next best thing to CNN in the Changed world. Most Eaters had been exterminated, assimilated, or imploded, especially further south. He doubted any of them would venture that close to what had come to pass for civilization. Banditry, however, was a known persistent problem everywhere.

Luke's boiled leather armor creaked with the motion of his horse. The noise made it difficult to hear other kinds of sounds. He made a mental note to have a look at it that evening. If they were lucky, there'd be room at one of the Grand Coulee City inns.

Even through the glare of the rising sun, he could see the smoke of multiple small cooking fires rising up from the three towns that collectively made up Grand Coulee City. They used to be three separate municipalities: Mason City; Grand Coulee; and Electric City. Those towns had been spared the wide-spread starvation that had decimated the global population, surviving mostly on fish from Osborn Bay and Banks Lakes, and the Columbia River. Most of their deaths had been the elderly and people requiring medical attention impossible in the Changed world. That had turned them into one of the core members of the coalition known as the Free Cities of the Yakima.

Luke and Mei had spent the past two years making a living as armed escort. Luke had, of course, traded his pistol for a recurve bow and Mei had been a quick study of that weapon, as well. Both of them routinely rode with arrows to the string, directing their horses with only their legs. They continued to do so well into town.

"I could do with a real breakfast," said Luke. "How about you?"

Mei grinned and nodded.

They smiled at each other and chuckled. Maybe they'd become a sort of Lone Ranger and Tanto of the Changed Pacific Northwest. They could easily have done far worse.


End file.
